+1 for anyone who can post a great video of someone actually doing it (the guy in the Ars video wasn't)
–
Ivo FlipseJul 15 '10 at 7:00

1

It is possible in other game too, just take this HoN player who average 202 APM for 35 minutes match. heroesofnewerth.com/player_stats.php?aid=400734 He said in interview that most of his action where spam click. So when someone does 300 APM it's most probably a lot of spam action that aren't all useful.
–
HoLyVieRJul 15 '10 at 13:41

It should also be noted that APM counter in the replays isn't actually "per minute". If the game is being played on Faster (which is the default), the APM being reported needs to be multiplied by 1.33 to be per minute.
–
Ben SJul 15 '10 at 17:35

3

I was talking with a pro at an expo I was at this weekend. Yeah, a lot of them are not useful, but if they keep their APM up at 300+, even while they're not doing anything useful, their mind is in the game, and they don't have to ramp up at all, they're ready to respond at that rate.
–
McKayJul 19 '10 at 15:39

5 Answers
5

It's a combination of the keyboard and mouse. I'm sure we've all used shortcuts on our keyboards and that's most likely what the gamers do - use shortcuts. If you think about the beginning stages of the game: you click on your hatchery or whatever, build a drone, you can use a keyboard shortcut to build the drone for you. Then you click on a drone, tell them all to go collect minerals and then you click on one drone and tell it to build a spawning pool (also a shortcut).

We probably all use ctrl+c , ctrl+v pretty quickly - the gamers have just, like McKay said, tuned their brains to all the shortcuts for Starcraft.

If you look at the rest of the documentary (http://vimeo.com/12730027) you will notice how much of their life they pour into this game. It's not only that they spend their entire life doing it, but only select few get that high that it appears to be a combination of practice and natural skill.

It is not much unlike other sports where people spend a long time training and still only some excel.

APM is primarily limited by what you can remember to do, not what you are physically able to do.

McKay's secretary example is also correct, when typing you generally know which key you are going to press next. If you always know what you are going to do next in Starcraft 2 your APM will skyrocket.

A 100wpm typist doesn't know what key they are going to hit next. Instead they think of the word, and their fingers pretty much type it without conscious thought. I would guess that the same is pretty much true of the extreme action people.
–
DJClayworthSep 8 '10 at 20:48